One More Step
by Mission to Marzipan
Summary: Being stabbed with a poison dagger gives you a lot of time to think. Annabeth after being wounded on the bridge during TLO coming to terms with what has to be done to save the world. Luke must die and she has to find a way to live with that. Oneshot.


**Hey everyone.**

**I know that this isn't necessarily the chapter you wanted to see but the chapter of Instead of Going Under is written. It just needs to be edited and posted. Soon.**

**Instead here's a oneshot for you. It's set during TLO, after Annabeth is wounded in the battle on the bridge. I had a little bit of writer's block and took the advice of a friend who demanded that I open iTunes (other digital music libraries are available), skip forward five songs and write with whatever came out. The song was My Life by 12 Stones and, well, this is what I came up with.**

**With thanks to Proud to be Plug and Princess Nemo of Casper, who managed to convince me that this shouldn't end up in the recycling bin. I hope they were right.**

**Marzipan.**

* * *

Annabeth hissed loudly as she dragged herself up from the lounge chair. Silena had just left her for the first time in hours to run to the bathroom and fetch some more nectar, to remoisten the washcloth she had been using on Annabeth's forehead. Annabeth was by herself for the first time since she had been stabbed on the terrace of the Plaza.

It scared her.

The fragility of life had become a key issue for the moment there and she was suddenly afraid that she might just drop dead here without anyone to notice, without anyone to voice all her regrets to. That and being alone left her with no distractions, only questions and a slow-churning maelstrom of dark thoughts, was terrifying.

The blankets covering her started to slide off as she rose and she reflexively grabbed at them with her wounded arm. A wave of crippling pain shot through her entire side; stars exploded like it was the Fourth of July all over again in front of her vision.

Unashamedly, she bent double and threw up noisily in the nearest potted plant as the pain continued to pound, riding it out with her nails dug deep into her good hand until it eventually began to recede. Sweat had broken out on her forehead again and she was panting but she thought that that was the last of it. There couldn't be anything left but bile.

As the pain finally dialled back down to a dull, background throb she wasn't sure she had ever felt anything more pleasurable.

Eventually, she swallowed hard and dashed tears from her eyes with the forearm that still worked properly. Will had done his best with the healing; in fact, it was probably the best medical care short of intervention from Apollo himself but she still felt wrung out. Her teeth were still threatening to chatter right out of her skull unless she kept them clenched tight. Her head pulsed along with her accelerated heartbeat. Nausea still roiled threateningly in the pit of her stomach.

Shaking her head and taking a deep breath in through her nose, to the point where she got a little dizzy, she stood up. Lurching from one piece of furniture sturdy enough to support her to another she staggered across the terrace like she was on the deck of a ship in a storm. She could barely stand and her knees and thighs trembled with exhaustion and effort; she fell the last couple of feet to her destination.

Her hands slapped onto the rail around the terrace just in time to stop herself knocking out her teeth on the metal bar. She clung for dear life, like an overboard sailor to a life preserver, dragging her tired, aching and wounded body towards the edge.

Central Park was spread out below her. Previously, the green space had stood as a beacon of tranquillity within the never-sleeping city but now it was a mess, with trees uprooted and craters sending wafts of greasy smoke into the air. The Pond was covered in oily scum and the grass was brown, withered and scorched.

The city around the Park had fared worse, with chunks taken out of buildings and fires burning far and wide. Even though all the mortals were asleep now there were car and burglar alarms piercing the air with shrill sirens; monsters and maybe even demigods desperate for supplies had obviously taken their toll. The roads were cracked and pitted; she could see cars crushed as if they were no more than their Matchbox counterparts. They were abandoned haphazardly everywhere, leaving the city devoid of traffic.

The immobile cars only made the faux-silence that hung over the city like a shroud more apparent and more eerie, ramming the point home. Traffic was meant to be surging through the city's arteries; mortals were meant to be darting through it all, their precarious lives intermingling with everyone else's.

She could suddenly see weirdly vividly the Threads (capital T, the important ones held by the Fates) of the city's inhabitants unravelling behind them as they went about their daily lives, making up the city's lifeblood on a normal day — Hades, just _yesterday _had been a normal day for them.

The Threads should be crossing paths and interweaving themselves with the fabric of the city, intertwining with the Threads of others, perhaps getting tied in an impossible knot, for good or for ill. A tapestry should be being created in front of her very eyes as life just _occurred_.

Instead, nearly all was motionless. The city was stagnating.

The stillness gaping beneath her made the constant tugging of one particular knot in her own Thread more apparent to the point that it was almost a physical pain as it desperately tried to unpick itself.

It would have to try harder because it wouldn't budge; it was tied too tight and she was too damned stubborn to let it. Long ago, a pact had been made. A promise. She, Luke and Thalia had all declared themselves family, had interwoven their own Threads entirely as a happy side effect of doing so, for better and for worse.

Now the knot was being picked at and she didn't know for how much longer it would hold, or, rather, how much longer she could justify holding onto _it_.

There was so much at stake and Luke was so different now. Ever since she had been stabbed and Kronos had loomed over her in Luke's body the burning question had been ever-present — did she now have to call into discount everything that he had given her in the past, all he had said and done, because of the choices he had made recently? What about the gift of her knife and along with it the promise that had bound them together for so long? Did that not _mean_ anything anymore? Was he simply gone, nothing more than Kronos's vessel?

Was it not easier to just say yes, to agree with that, rather than face the terror of the What If?

Luke had cared enough about her to attempt to turn her, she reasoned. He wanted her on his side in this one and so he had tried to force his indoctrination upon her, tried to tell her how to live, to reject the gods, as if it wasn't just her live but his.

_Theirs. _

But it _was_ her life and it was her decision to make. Not only that but she guessed he'd tried to turn a lot of people and Kronos had probably thought that turning her, because of her proximity to Percy, would be a huge victory and would ensure Percy's downfall. Luke had had his reasons for wanting her and they weren't all because of family.

She closed her eyes and gripped the railing hard, both to keep herself upright and to anchor herself, to remind herself that she was here, that this was real, that it was indeed happening. She was going to war with Luke as the enemy's Generalissimo. He had probably shredded his soul to ribbons to allow Kronos in and yet all she could feel was connected to him, despite it all.

There were many times that she had found herself lost in his eyes, his face, his smile, his arms. He had a hold on her and at one point she had one on him — maybe she still did. That possibly mutual grip was stronger and went deeper than the one she could muster to cling to the railings with.

They had been through so much together, seen so much, done so much, grew up at a rate children should never have to all at the same time. How could she just let that go, throw it away like yesterday's garbage? Thalia had the Hunters now; that was where she belonged. Luke had gone and gotten in so deep with Kronos and convinced himself that that was where _he _belonged and that just left her standing and watching as two-thirds of their little triumvirate took vastly separate paths, straining the knot in their Threads to the limit with the stretch such actions required.

She had been left on her own, with no real place or connections to say were truly hers, with no discernible path she could see to follow. Except… perhaps Percy, one day, could provide that and she could say that that was where she belonged, with him, but that wasn't _now_, it wasn't immediate, and it didn't stop the loneliness biting her as she stood above the apocalyptic scene beneath her.

Perhaps one day she had Percy could go merrily hand-in-hand down that elusive path, even though it was still invisible to her, skipping off into the sunset, but right now...

Right now, she could be the only one in the world.

Just for a second, a voice wormed through her consciousness, telling her that life was hard and the decisions she had to make now were harder. To choose whether or not to eliminate Luke to save herself, to save the world was going to be an agonising decision — could she make it when it came to it?

When she opened her eyes the wind blew, sweeping hair backwards and off her face and drying tears that had escaped her closed lids into sticky tracks on her cheeks. And there the answer was, just as if it had been borne on the wind.

Luke had to die.

She knew that. What other resolution could there be? That was the wisdom that suddenly filled her, making her heavy as if she was being filled with rapidly-cooling molten lead.

Pieces were finally clicking into place in her brain. The pain of the wound and the poison's fever had left her drifting in and out of consciousness, especially on the less-than-gentle flight back with Blackjack, which had jostled and bounced her so much she had screamed. Not that it was his fault but between the harsh glare of daylight from being awake and the blessed, cool dark of unconsciousness her brain had hovered in a fugue state, uninhibited, and it had allowed the whole picture to form.

The cursed blade couldn't be Backbiter like she had first assumed. Backbiter was deadly and was capable of reaping both mortal and non-mortal souls, yes, and it was merged with Kronos's scythe, but it wasn't really _cursed. _It was evil, destructive and the weapon of an ancient, homicidal power just a stone's throw from the primordial sure but where was the curse?

No. The blade of the prophecy had to have had some kind of curse laid on it somehow; it had to have been contaminated by a broken oath. Then she had considered that Riptide was the blade; after all, things hadn't ended so well for Zoë Nightshade after she wrought it for Heracles. A promise had been broken when Heracles had snubbed her but surely that curse couldn't still exist now, not when Percy wielded the blade?

It would be fitting for it to be Percy's sword that ended it all but she couldn't help but think that the curse from Heracles' broken promise would not be able to linger now. No warrior had ever been more straight and true than Percy, even if she nearly puked again over the railing at the sheer corniness of that statement. She had faith that the curse could not have persisted with Percy as the owner of Riptide.

Therefore, the only cursed blade she could come up with was currently tucked into her belt.

The blade of her knife, though polished and oiled meticulously as always, was tarnished and tainted by the promises of family Luke had shredded when he shredded his soul and turned his back on the gods. It had to be it.

The door to the terrace opened behind her; she heard light footsteps walk across the tile. Silena was back and immediately set about gently chastising her for being up and draping a blanket around her shoulders.

As Silena dragged her back towards the lounge chair Annabeth took one last look at the city, battered and bruised but not yet broken, and fingered the hilt of her knife.

Luke had chosen his own path, as hard as that was to consider. She had to choose hers. It was her own life and she had to find her own way.

Each shuffling, clumsy step back towards the lounge chair felt like it was a step away from Luke as she distanced herself from him and each step could have been another poison dagger in her body for all that it hurt.

She didn't _want _to walk away — gods, she wanted him to still have a chance, she _did. _She wanted the fairy-tale ending, where they all lived happily ever after, but it wasn't going to happen.

Every step burned with shame and guilt but the path she was on was suddenly already mapped out when it had been so murky earlier and it was Luke who was pushing her along it, gut-wrenching step by step. It was Luke squeezing tears out of her eyes as she walked, the knowledge of the task ahead deadweight around her neck.

The knot tugged hard again and she felt maybe that the Threads were starting to slip their binding.

Every single step was along the brand new trail but although Luke had started her journey down it, she was blazing for herself and she hoped fiercely that each step was also one towards Luke's redemption. There would be none for him in this life, she knew, but one day, in one incarnation or the other, she hoped he would find himself redeemed.

But for that to happen she had to get herself clear of the life he was living now, get out of the way of the backlash from the Threads pinging free. They would whip around like high tension cables when they were finally released and slice through everything in their path as they were freed from a bond that had lasted the best part of a decade.

She had to get away, had to escape.

Had to let go.

Just another step away. Just another step forwards and onwards for her, for all of them.

Just one more.


End file.
